Japan mapping (Rad/Quake)

Maps Identify Fallout and Radiation Hotspots from Japan Nuclear Disaster. By Edwin Cartlidge of Nature magazine The distribution of fallout from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has now been mapped by two independent teams.

The charts reduce the uncertainty surrounding the amount of contamination across Japan, and help to show which areas should be safe to return to farming. The accident at Fukushima occurred after a magnitude-9 earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit northeastern Japan on March 11. The disasters knocked out the plant's cooling system, causing several reactors to melt down and huge amounts of radioactive material to be emitted. One of the radionuclides released was cesium-137, which has a half-life of 30 years and poses a long-term health risk if absorbed by the soil in significant quantities. Japan-wide maps of soil concentrations of the radionuclide cesium-137 can help the government to work out which areas are likely to be safe for farming. Two studies have now used different methods to map the fallout over larger areas.
Fukushima/Tokyo - Low Level Radiation « rchoetzlein - Theory. * Note: I’m pleased to announce a new animated graphic of Fukushima radiation regional effects.

"There were a lot of talking heads speculating about how this could happen or that could happen," says Alvarez, a Web developer, news fiend and all-around data junkie. "But not a lot of facts.
" Alvarez got an idea: Enlist an army of citizen scientists to buy Geiger counters — they're advertised online for several hundred dollars — and send radiation measurements to a website for posting and continual updating. "We thought there was something noble to the notion of having people purchase their own detection devices and post data," Alvarez says. By last Saturday the Portland, Ore.

Is this a good idea?
UNOSAT supports crowd sourcing community. Geneva 14 March 2011.

Satellite images show tsunami-ravaged Japan coast: Scientific American Gallery. When devastation extends as far as the human eye can see, digital eyes in the sky can provide essential information for emergency response efforts.

These satellite images show the town of Soma (red dot) and surrounding area on Japan's northeastern coast as they appeared on September 5, 2010, [left] before the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami, and on the day after. On the heels of the earthquake, tsunami heights of 7.3 meters were reported in Soma. A day later floodwaters stretched several kilometers inland.

Soma is a port village of 38,000 people located about 150 kilometers southwest of the magnitude 9.0 quake's epicenter and 40 kilometers north of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. As of March 20, more than 100 residents of Soma have been confirmed dead. —Nina Bai. Day length & GPS coords. The 8.9-magnitude quake in Japan will not only leave an everlasting impression on the country, but globally as a result of the quake’s effect on the rotation of the Earth and GPS coordinates.

Incredibly, the earthquake in Japan was so powerful it sped up the rotation of the Earth resulting in the shrinking of a 24-hour day by 1.8 milliseconds. The estimate comes from Richard Gross who is based at NASA‘s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Gross’ estimate could change as additional data about the quake is gathered. He had recently stated that the day shrank by 1.6 milliseconds, but has since updated the original estimate based on new information.

How could an earthquake speed up the Earth’s rotation? While such a small change won’t cause people to change their clocks, the dramatic shift in geography will require updates to GPS devices and maps which rely on GPS coordinates. Read more at Space.com and MSNBC. Google Crisis Response.

Prefectures of Japan. Prefectures of Japan The chief executive of each prefecture is a directly-elected governor (知事, chiji?).

Ordinances and budgets are enacted by a unicameral assembly (議会, gikai?) Whose members are elected for four-year terms. Under the current Local Autonomy Law, each prefecture is further divided into cities (市, shi?) And districts (郡, gun?) Background[edit] The West's use of "prefecture" to label these regions of Japan stems from 15th-century Portuguese explorers' and traders' use of "prefeitura" to describe the fiefdoms they encountered there.

Those fiefs were headed by a local warlord or family, and despite that those fiefs have long since been dismantled, merged, and reorganized numerous times over, and given legislative governance and oversight, the rough translation stuck. In 2003, then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi proposed that the government consolidate the current prefectures into about 10 regional states. Powers[edit] Japan is a unitary state. Types of prefecture[edit] To[edit]
ESRI Japan Earthquake. Nuclear Impact. Japan Quake Map. Texas Tech - Japan Earthquake. Japan Quake Map.